{"id":624,"date":"2009-11-30T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-30T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/?p=624"},"modified":"2019-04-10T07:33:11","modified_gmt":"2019-04-10T11:33:11","slug":"thanks-to-lug-soles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/?p=624","title":{"rendered":"Thanks to Lug Soles"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It was a very nice day yesterday — sunny and unusually warm for this time of year at 64\u00b0F (18\u00b0C). I got out the Harley and went for a ride.<\/p>\n

I had plotted a potential route to lead for my club, and wanted to check it out. I am sure glad I did.<\/p>\n

A nice back road as it appeared on the map ended at a T-intersection. Turn left at the “T” and continue on another nice back road. Or so it seemed.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the map has no details as to hills or terrain. It turned out that the intersection was on a steep incline! I later determined that it was a 15\u00b0 upgrade. The road did not level off at the top of the hill — it just ended. When I stopped at the stop sign at the end of the road and top of the hill, I was pointed to the heavens. Heavens to Mergatroyd! (don’t know what this means? I date myself, but see this explanation<\/a>).<\/p>\n

I have never been adept at handling a manual transmission. For the life of me, I could not manage to get the bike revved enough while letting the clutch out to get the bike going without rolling back or potentially stalling. Heck! I was stuck!<\/p>\n

Thank goodness for lug soles. I was wearing my tall brown Wesco harness boots that have a thick Vibram\u00ae100R lug sole. They are like snow tires for the feet. I was able to hold my very heavy motorcycle on the hill by the sheer pressure on my boots planted firmly on the pavement (and an assist from my brakes) while I was trying to figure out what to do. I couldn’t maneuver forward, as I couldn’t get the bike going without rolling back, potentially falling over, or stalling. I tried and tried and just couldn’t do it.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, few cars came up behind me while I was stuck there, and I was able to signal to them to go around me while I was stuck in this predicament. Then, most fortunately, another biker on a big Harley like mine came up from another direction and asked if I needed help.<\/p>\n

“Yep, I’m hillshy. I can’t go forward.”<\/p>\n

He realized that I was stuck, and drove past me to the bottom of the hill to block traffic while I slowly backed up, turned around, and went back from the direction from which I came. As I passed him, I gave him a big thank you shout and a thumbs up. He waved. Thank goodness for the good samaritans out there in the biker community. I’m not quite sure what I would have done if he had not stopped to help.<\/p>\n

BTW: I am not going on this route to lead a ride! I have learned my lesson.<\/p>\n

<\/span>AZ: This is precisely why I would not take you up on your offer to borrow your manual-transmission car while I visited you in Phoenix. If this happened to me while I was operating your car on the hilly terrain of Arizona, things would have gone to heck in a handbasket quickly, as I could not stick my boot out of your car onto the pavement to hold me while I was trying to rectify the problem. And, my dear AZ, this is precisely why I LIKE lug-soled boots. They saved my butt, big-time! Other than a bruised ego, nothing else happened. I did not drop my Harley as I was slowly backing up and turning on that huge incline. The boots held me and my bike firmly as I was maneuvering.<\/p>\n

I am not skilled at using a manual transmission. My inability to use a stick-shift skillfully has a lot to do with being a klutzy, uncoordinated guy. This is why my family gave up trying to teach me how to dance. It’s just not within my skillset to learn how to handle such a situation.<\/p>\n

Life is short: wear lug-soled boots when you operate a heavyweight motorcycle!
\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was a very nice day yesterday — sunny and unusually warm for this time of year at 64\u00b0F (18\u00b0C). I got out the Harley and went for a ride. I had plotted a potential route to lead for my … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-motorcycle-ride","category-wesco-boots"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}